The Deserter
by Cathlem114
Summary: A man recounts his time surviving the infection, two years after the initial outbreak. His fate depends upon what he tells the strange man sitting accross from him, but no one has believed him so far. My first story.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own Left 4 Dead or its characters. Everything here belongs to its respective creator.

Chapter 1

The Deserter

2 Years after initial outbreak

Augustus Mental Rehabilitation Clinic, Denver, Colorado

I'm sitting in a windowless room, empty except for the table I'm sitting at and a mirror on the wall opposite me. I've seen this show plenty of times before. This is an interrogation. A man in a dark suit walks in, sunglasses in all. CIA I bet, if they even still exist anymore. He sits down with a smirk on his. I wanna wipe it off with my fist.

"Hello Mr. Callahan, I was beginning to think we'd never find you. I was hoping to-"

"PFC. Callahan, 3rd National Guard." I correct him, and the smirk slides off his face.

"Not anymore it's not. Mr. Callahan, do you know why I am here?"

"Flaunt your plastic badge and pretend you're making a difference?" That did it, now he's scowling at me. Good.

"This is a very serious matter. Your_ life _depends on what goes on in this room. Now tell me, why exactly did you do it?"

This fucker has to be messing with my mind, I have no idea what he's talking about. He looks at me like I'm playing dumb, but I honestly have no idea what he means.

"Answer me you degenerate! I've been chasing this around for a year! Why did you do it, why did you kill them!" He slams his fist on the table, and two orderlies walk in. Either of them could arm wrestle a tank in under 5 seconds if they wanted to.

"I didn't fucking kill anybody Mr. High And Mighty assho-" He slams his fist on the table, and two orderlies come in. They stand by the door watching my every move. These guys look like they could arm wrestle a tank in under five seconds.

"You killed them! We saw you do it. Explain these." He reaches into his front pocket and pulls out pictures. In the first one is a massive battle taking place, the picture was taken from overhead. U.S. Military personnel in a losing battle against the infected. The second is a view from overhead yet again, but this time it's zoomed in. There is a kid standing in a train, looking back at the battle from picture one. He has short, dark hair, a thin layer of unkempt facial hair, and is wearing a torn and bloody U.S. Military uniform. His young, 19 year-old face looks out at the carnage behind him, relief his only feeling as he speeds away from the deathtrap behind him.

That kid was me.

"Whoa buddy! I don't know who said what, but it wasn't my-"

"SHUT UP! I've been following this for a year, trying to find that kid in the picture. I found you. A crazy, bat shit insane kid who tried to play soldier but didn't have the balls to-"

"IT WASN'T ME!" I start flailing around and the orderlies have to restrain me, as I try punching, kicking, and biting my way out. One has a syringe, ready to sedate me. Not again, the memories will come back, please don't send me back there-

"Stop." Both orderlies let me go, surprised at his order. I was as stunned as they are, so much so that I stop trying to fight. "Now tell me Mr. Callahan," he says, his voice low, but filled with power. "who exactly was it?"

I can't speak. No one ever asked me this before. No one believed me. He speaks again, "Tell me your story Marty. I want to know everything." What? He has to know I have one hell of a long story to tell.

"Sir, you mean from the beginning? We're going to be here awhile."

He sits back and props his feet up onto the table. "Go ahead son. I have all the time in the world." Well, there's nowhere to start like the beginning.

"My unit had just returned from overseas. I was done with my second tour of duty. In a month I would be out of the army, on to training for a civilian job to make ends meet. A weird mission came down from the top. We were going into Philadelphia to help keep the peace at the evacuation center at the Red Line main station in the center of the city. We never made it halfway there."

2 Years ago

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Holly Street Apartments

We were grouping up with some humvees near the apartments. We were going to load up and push through to the evac center. _Push through? Who the hell are we fighting the hell are we fighting, the commute? _Those were my thoughts as we took all the ammo we could carry. "Everyone ready?" The Lieutenant wanted to go, we were wasting to much time for him. He was one of those medal hunters, he thought this was a movie or something. The rest of us were just confused as hell.

We nodded the affirmative. "Alright shitbirds, lets get movin'!" He honked the horn, and then they were on us. They seemed to pour out of the buildings, there were hundreds of them. The LT was gone in a second, taking his humvee with him. The rest of us were boxed in and started shooting. My M4 Carbine thundered non-stop. Tyson jumped onto the humvee with a .50 cal on it and began spraying into the crowd. Blood and body parts flew everywhere as our rifles joined in. Sarge, Mike, and me were taking cover behind Tyson's vehicle and laying in to the bastards. My mind hadn't registered them as _zombies_ yet. It looked like we might make it out as their numbers dwindled, but we weren't out of the woods. I reloaded my rifle as the loudest roar I ever heard echoed from the rooftop above us.

A giant, muscled monstrosity jumped down infront of us. It picked up Tyson's vehicle like nothing and threw it at us. Tyson never made it out. Then it began running at me and it swung its tree-like arm from the right. I dived to the ground and began unloading into its gut, but the arm took Mike's head clean off. It prepared to bring its fists down onto me, but I rolled out of the way.

By this point I was a gonner, I knew I wouldn't make it out alive. Then a horn sounded, a car horn, and the beast looked to his left. I have no idea why, and I don't I ever will, but the LT's humvee came screaming down the street. He drove straight through the new horde that appeared, going straight for the body builder's dream that was almost on top of me. Then it picked up a chunck of the street and hurled it at him. He tried to avoid it, but swerved into the entrance of the apartment building behind us, caving in the front wall. I started to scramble back, and had just enough bearing to run to the crash and avoid the blow that he nearly dealt me.

Then Sarge, that big, beautiful hard-ass ran straight at the thing with a grenade. Just as he puleld the pin, a hooded figure leaped from the other side of the street and landed on him, knocking the grenade to the ground beside them. I jumped through the gap the humvee crash had made into the apartments, and I looked back just as the grenade exploded. Shrapnel hit my face, scarred the right side up pretty bad. The big bastard turned from me and brought his hands down on what was left of Sarge and the hoodie thing, its back bloodied from taking the brunt of the explosion.

I did the only thing I could do. I ran.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Meeting

I had to think. My unit was gone. I was alone. I was _fucked_. I ran up the apartment stairs, finding most of them barricaded. I wasn't able to climb over any of them, so I guess the people who made these knew what they were doing. Too bad for me, right? I stumbled into one of the few unlocked apartments and found two of them shambling around, a man and a woman. I took out my sidearm and dispatched both of them, one shot each. I ran over to the phone and I prayed that it was still working.

It took awhile, but I finally managed to get through. I was calling my friend, Samantha, who lived in Riverside. She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Sam, listen, it's me, Cal." All my friends called me Cal, not Marty. "You need to get out of Riverside now. Do you understand?"

Her voice came back, wrought with fear. "Why, what's going on Cal? Where are you? Are you hurt or-"

I tried to put courage into my voice, to make her feel better. I was nearly sobbing as I ran through what just happened in my head. "I don't know if this is some classified crap or something, but Philly is gone. Overrun. Out of the picture. I don't know what it is, maybe that Green Flu, but everyone here went crazy! There's to many of them, you need to get out of Riverside now!"

She started shouting at her parents in the background, yelling at them to get everything in the car. She was smart enough to listen to me, I was glad. Sam and I were close, like, _close_ close, you know? If anything happened to her I'd...well I guess I don't know what I did.

She spoke to me one more time, before the line cut out. "Cal, where are you? We can come get you and-"

"I'm in the middle of fucking Philly! How do you think I know this? Just get out and head, I don't know, west? North? Just get away from here!"

"Cal, I'm sca-" Then the line cut out. It was gone and I had to move. I felt the right side of my face for the first time, and my hand came away covered in my own blood. Times like that make you wish you had been a medic, right? All I did was wash it up some in the sink right next to me, then I went for the roof. I didn't want to die, I was only 19. Along the way I raided every apartment I saw for food, ammo, anything like that. When I made it to the roof, I realized how hopeless my situation was.

I saw the entire city, or at least the portion I was in, engulfed in flames. I turned on my radio for the first time and heard screaming all over. I turned down the volume so that thing below wouldn't hear me. People were yelling, units were being overrun. The EVAC site was under heavy attack, including more of those behemoth's that killed all my friends. I couldn't imagine facing that one down there again, let alone three of them. I decided to make a call, try to get a chopper out to pick me up. No dice.

"This is Private First Class Callahan, on the roof of the Holly Street Apartments, can anyone hear me?" An older voice came over, and I recognized it as Captain Jensen, my C.O.

"Cal?" I could hear gunfire and screaming in the background, and the Captain frequently stopped talking to me to bark orders at the people on his end of the line. It was chaos everywhere. "What is it son, we could use some reinforcements here, where is your unit?"

"Dead sir, everyone's gone! I'm the only one left. I need a chopper to the Holly Street apartments ASAP."

"I can't do that son, we need every bird we can get at the hospital." I looked up and could see the hospital from where I was. I could faintly make out the flashes of gunfire and the EVAC choppers leaving and approaching the rooftop of the hospital. Suddenly he started scream, it was so sudden I dropped my radio. I picked it back up just in time I guess. "Cal, you are ON YOUR OWN! Do you understand, we can't get you out! If you can make your way to Mercy Hospital you can-" Then he started yelling behind him and the sporadic shots I heard before turned into a rolling crescendo of automatic weapons fire. Can you believe I nearly tried, then and there, to get to the hospital? I know, stupid. I looked back for the final time, and saw one of the helicopters spin out of control and slam into the helipad. The explosion wasn't big, but it was big enough to knock down everyone on the roof. I heard gasping from the Captain's end, and then he whispered. I don't think I was meant to hear it because it sounded like a prayer. The next second I heard the scream of the horde through the radio, then the scream of the few surviving people being butchered and torn to shreds. Like I said, I was fucked.

I was on that rooftop for a week, scavenging food from the apartments below. I remember looking over the side of the roof and looking at the swarm in the streets below. That big bastard was down there, his back all fucked up from the grenade. It was like he was pacing around the building, looking for something. Well, the only something worth looking for was me, so I pulled my head back over the side and whispered a prayer of my own. I knew I wasn't going to make it out. Why I didn't turn my rifle on myself at that moment, I'll never know. I guess I still believed that suicide was a one way ticket to hell? I lost my faith overseas, seeing my best friends' lives ended out of the blue. Landmines, snipers, firefights, you name it. But hey, the end of the world makes everyone religious, right?

By the end of the week I didn't have the strength to pull the trigger anymore, even if I wanted to. The water was out by day 3, and I ran out of food on day 5. My wounds had scarred over by now, so I wasn't worried about bleeding out. That's when I heard it, a helicopter flying right near the rooftop I was on! I pulled out my smoke grenade, green for friendly, and prepared to use it when I heard the shouting. It was faint, but not far off and I could make out the words. "Hey! Come back! We're not infected! Come back!" Then I tuned back in to the real world, and heard gunfire soon after. The prospect of new faces energized me, and I bolted down the fire escape on the other end of the roof. Then I heard a car alarm, and that godawful roar that meant they were coming. Then I heard _him._

I made my first mistake, leaving the safety of my holdout. Bastard, for that is what I named him, the monster that killed my unit, was here. Well I wasn't going down without a fight, so I went down the alley, turned the corner, and stopped in my tracks. Bastard yelled again, and I had just enough mind to dive out of the way before the car hit me. It has been thrown through the street but not at me. Having cleaned a portion of the monsters out, I saw four people backing slowly away from him toward me. Then they started running, firing behind them as they went. I couldn't afford to be caught here by myself, as I had no idea if these humans were friend or foe.

I bolted down the alleyway in the opposite direction. I came upon a police cruiser surrounded by by bodies with a handgun sitting atop the hood. I left it in my rush to safety, sprinting through the street. I arrived at the Red Line North, and remembered the EVAC in the center of town. I knew they were probably all dead, but there was nowhere else to go. I found a red steel door at the bottom of the staircase down and pushed my way in closing it behind me. I should have taken some of the supplies on the table but I was in to much of a rush to think clearly. Opening the identical door on the other side of the room I was stopped dead.

It was a dead end.

Thinking quickly I devised a plan in which I would destroy the floor using my remaining grenades, but I needed something big to make the hole. I found some cans of propane in the corner and piled them on top of each other, setting my grenades where I could. I pulled the pin on one then ran, but the timer must have been short, or maybe I didn't run as fast as I thought I could. The ground rose up beneath me and my face became intimate with the ceiling. Pain shot through my skull, and I landed on my side, surrounded by flames and debris. The jabs of pain were immense as I was seemingly slow roasted by the flames around me. It felt like my skin was burning off. Then I heard them again, the horde. It was coming for me and I couldn't fight back, so I did the only thing I could. I rolled myself onto my back as I braced for the end and let darkness take me.

But it wasn't the end. In my own head I was back there, in the war. I saw Tyson, and Sarge, and Mike, and Frankie and Dusty. In my dream I walked down the middle of an old village with my squad, Frankie on point, Dusty bringing up the rear. Then a shot rings out and Dusty falls dead. Frankie tries to run but steps on a mine, with his legs going one way, his body the other. Sarge screams at us to get down as bullets begin flying through the air. I feel like I was punched in the head as my helmet goes flying and the ground next to Mike explodes in a shower of dirt and flying, hot metal.

In a daze I tried to sit up, but I couldn't move. Tyson ran over to me and tried to pull me up, but I wouldn't budge. I heard him scream as a round tore into his shoulder, but the scream soon amplified into a roar, the kind you hear when _they_ are coming. Then I wasn't in the war anymore, I was in Philly. The biggest group of them I'd seen yet was running at me, letting out that horrible noise. And in the front was him, the Bastard. Next to him was my squad, but they were changed. Pale white skin, their eyes rolled back into heir heads, and blood flowing from wherever it could escape their faces. They reached me first, and started laying into me. I took a punch to the face from Sarge, Tyson kicked me in the gut. Mike and the LT tried pulling their arms out of their sockets while Captain Jensen craned his neck over to bite me.

Before he could the Bastard picked me up, and he did it again. I watched as he killed each and every one of them again, then he turned to me. He let out what I think was his version of a laugh and his fist rushed to greet my face.

I woke up in a cold sweat and screamed. I was back in Philly, the real Philly, not the one from my dreams. I was awake again, and I wasn't dead! My joy was cut short though as the barrel of a gun was shoved in my mouth, and I heard a gruff voice speak. "Do anything at all, and you'll be shitting this out for a week."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Journey Begins

I was panicked, I was scared. Some psycho with a hard on for murder had his gun in my mouth and wasn't going to take it away unless it was through the new hole he was going to put in the back of my head. I tried to imagine myself somewhere nice so my last memories would be happy ones. I was at Samantha's house in Riverside which had always been more of a home for me than my house. That was before I dropped out at 17 and joined the Army. My parents never forgave me for that.

The guy was a big guy, shaved head, leather vest, and tattoos up both arms. He looked like some guy out of those murder movies to me, a kind of demonic smile was on his face. Then a small hand pulled the gun away and I felt myself being helped up. I stammered out that I was alright, but they saw through my ruse as soon as I fell on my face when they let go of me. An older voice greeted my ears as I was helped up a second time. "Are you sure about that son?"

I turned to face him and tried to read his face. This old buzzard had one hell of a poker face. The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing a military jacket and combat boots, topping it off with a green beret resting on his head. A cigarette was between his lips which were surrounded by an almost silver beard. He put his hand out. "Name's Bill kid, over there are Louis and Zoey," He gestured to a guy who looked like he could be Shaun of the Dead and a woman with a red jacket and a ponytail ",and that outstanding citizen who greeted you was Francis. Now who exactly are _you?_" After that he drew his gun, a 1911 Colt by the look of it. He didn't raise it, but he kept it at his side finger on the trigger.

"I'm Private First Class Martin Callahan, sir." I tried to give him a weak salute and he returned it. "My unit was wiped out in front of the apartments, some giant thing made of muscles was stalking around the apartments for a week." I was shuddering now, remembering the Bastard.

Louis piped in. "You mean the tank? Was his back all scarred up, because if it was we got him for you." I didn't really feel much at that moment other than surprise. They took him down? Really? An entire platoon of highly trained, experienced military personnel got wiped out by this guy, but these four _civilians_ took him down and acted like they did it all the time? Bill told us to move out and we did. None of them told me to stay, or go some other direction, so I just tagged along. I had a better chance of making it with these guys than I did on my own.

We trekked through the subways to a goal that may not have even been there. Bill told me that they were heading for Mercy Hospital, the last EVAC point in the entire city. After I told him what I saw he said he expected as much and we weren't changing course just because we would see a few more zombies there. That hit me hard. _Zombies? What chance does humanity have now?_ I guess history would prove me wrong on that one, because if I was right we wouldn't be here having this conversation now, would we? My new friends filled me in on what we were up against. They told me the names of the mutated ones, what they did, how to fight them. The subway was overrun, bodies were everywhere, and there was that smell. The smell that dead bodies make, but it was a little different this time. I had become immunized to that smell overseas, but it was back in full force now mixed with something a little different. As we made our way through the darkened tunnels Francis had to support me because I was still weak, something that neither of us wanted. We reached a big generator room with a minigun emplacement on one side and the door we entered through partially barricaded. Francis set me down in the corner of the room where the gun was located as Bill barked orders.

"Francis, you get on that gun while Zoey and I cover the flanks. Louis, take a Molotov and throw it through that hole in the floor once we fire the generators up. Cal, stay safe in that corner. You're not well enough to fight yet, but if you see a shot feel free to take it. Understood?" We all barked an affirmative and Zoey, being the fastest runner of the group, started the generators and ran back to us. For the entire fight I didn't have a shot to take. The few Francis didn't tear up with the minigun were dispatched quickly, and with great accuracy, by Bill and Zoey. Louis's Molotov annihilated the horde that tried to come from below, and the only time he really did anything other than that was to pick off the stragglers from up high with his SMG. I couldn't believe what I saw, and Francis must have seen it on my face as he picked me up again. He chuckled and said "Just another day at the office. We do this all the time kid."

We worked our way onto the street finding it a mess of broken cars. Bodies surrounded this fence in the middle of the street, near a pawnshop. The roar of a horde echoed from behind as Francis started running, not an easy task with me weighing him down. A horde came from the street behind and Zoey began to run as well. Bill and Louis backed up slowly, covering our retreat to the pawnshop. Louis took something off his belt, something that looked like a pipe with all kinds of things attached to it. By this time any other man would have been panicking, but not Francis. He picked me up, slung me on his shoulder, and broke into a full sprint to the pawnshop, Zoey trailing from behind. A sudden beeping noise erupted amidst the roars and screams, gradually becoming more of a tone. "I love this part." Francis said under his breath as he turned around. A massive explosion shook the street as body parts flew everywhere. Bill and Louis let out a yell of triumph and began running back to us, turning and firing periodically into the dust cloud behind.

We made it to another room with a red steel door, that Zoey identified as a Safe Room. Francis let me rest in the corner as they went about stocking up on ammo and supplies. I decided to break the somewhat eerie silence by talking to Louis. "Hey man, what was that thing you had out there? It wasted the entire horde!"

A smile broke his blank face as he loaded rounds into his SMG clip. "That, my man, was a pipe bomb. And our last one for the moment. I make them myself from stuff I find laying around, so feel free let me know if you find something you think I can use."

"Any suggestions?"

"Pipes might help." Francis interrupted our conversation with his smartass remark. Over the coming weeks I would find that he would do that a lot.

"Don't let Francis get you down man. It's in his nature and he can't help being stupid sometimes."

We both laughed while Francis raised his middle finger, again, something he would do more than once in the future. I cracked open one of the crates of K rations. They were these old, WWII rations for soldiers in the field. At least I think it as WWII, and they also tasted like shit. I mean like Boomer shit. Well, whatever war they were used in they would work well for World War Z, right? Good book, if you ever find a copy somewhere around. Anyways, we left the safe room with me walking on my own again. I stumbled a little bit but I managed well enough. Going through the back of a Burger Tank we came out to this water treatment plant or something. There was a small gas station at one end of it so we decided to search it for something.

Francis and Louis went in while Bill, Zoey, and I guarded the outside. Francis mumbled somewhat loudly from the gas station, a bit too loudly for Bill. He turned to chew Francis out but he forgot whatever it was he was going to say once he saw what it was Francis swore about. Zoey and I turned to see a tank, a freaking _tank_ squeezing through the door trying to catch Louis and Francis. It burst through and we all opened up, watching our fire around the pumps. Francis turned around and began spraying shotgun pellets all over the place, and I mean that when I say it. One lucky shell slammed right into one of the pumps, sending it up in flames. The explosion knocked the tank into the other pump, which was hit by another shell. That one exploded too, sending the entire roof of the building into the air, and Zoey flying backwards into one of the semis behind us. The debris fell and crushed the tank, soon after being consumed by flames. We all ran over to Zoey, who wasn't moving as we spread into one of those wagon circle formations the pioneers had.

Bill's face was stamped with worry, and his cigarette slipped out of his mouth. He took out his first aid and tried to help Zoey. "You a medic kid?"

"No sir, sorry sir."

"Just great…" He did the best he could, but we had to move and he propped her up against himself. I offered to take her from him, with him being older than we were and all. "Kid, this was my fault. I'll fix it." I walked to a lift in the corner with Francis but the veteran stopped us cold. "That thing'll attract'em. We got to find another way in." Glancing down the loading dock we found a metal door, shut. Walking over to it, Francis deduced it was out of order by punching the panel, hard.

He grinned madly again. "I got this. Cover me." He backed away, then ran straight at the door, bashing it in with his shoulder. He staggered on the other side of it and dropped his shotgun on the floor. 11 of them were inside the room and Louis and I stepped up to the plate. I laid into them with my M4, dropping three before they knew we were there. Louis took down two with his SMG, then drew his pistol and took out another two. Now they were running at Francis, seeing easier prey in sight. My M4 clicked empty and I pulled out my 9mm and popped 3 in the head. The last one was right on top of Francis, but he leaped up and grabbed her by the throat with one hand, and punched her with the other. She bit his hand when it connected with her face, causing him to yell and drop her. She bit him again, in the arm, as Louis dashed to my left. I had no shot. The bullet would hit Francis. I tackled the thing away from him and heard soft whimpering as blood began to pool beneath him. A hard fist slammed into the side of my head and I saw stars. The bitch leaned in to get a bite out of my neck, but a figure stepped up from behind and thrust something at her.

It slammed into the back of her head, coming out the eye socket and killing her instantly. Louis withdrew the metal pole form her head and dashed to Francis. I ran to Bill and Zoey, who was conscious now and weakly demanded to know what Francis had done this time. Bill laid her up against the wall and told me to watch her. They dragged Francis over who was now covered in his own blood. Just like with Zoey, Bill and Louis tried to disinfect the wounds and wrapped gauze around his arm and fist.

He was conscious the whole time, playing the tough guy and telling them when they did something wrong, which was whenever they tried to do something. He bit his lower lip as they finished and stood up, wobbling on his feet. Picking up his shotgun, he brushed it off and checked his shell count. Satisfied he began to forge onward, stopping only to tell us to "hurry the hell up, Bill's not getting any younger." We followed him, and I was surprised yet again by this man's endurance. Where anyone else I knew would need two of us to carry them Francis was, well, strolling through the warehouse and the alley behind it. We reached a red-lit room after descending a staircase with a half eaten corpse at the bottom of it. The poor bastard was gripping a pistol in his hand and looked to be in the early stages of infection. Entering the room itself we found that it led nowhere except down, into the sewers. Ever the leader Bill took point, followed by Louis, Francis and Zoey. I prepared to drop down as I heard a wheezing cough from behind. Looking back I saw a figure standing in the doorway we had just come through, wheezing and coughing. I shouted down, "Guys! I found someone up here and he looks like he needs help! He's coughing really bad."

I rose to go meet our new companion as Zoey shouted from below. "SMOKER! RUN!" My eyes widened and I inhaled sharply, but my breath was expelled as I felt a tongue wrap around my torso. It began pulling me toward it, and I knew if I lost my footing I'd be done for. So I ran straight at it and tackled it to the ground, freeing my left hand. I grabbed for something, anything to fight it, and my hand came to rest on something heavy and cold. I snatched the pistol from the dead man's grip and shot the tongue, severing it from the smoker. I ran back to the sewer entrance firing shots at my assailant as I went. One hit him right between the eyes and his head snapped back right before he exploded into a cloud of smoke. I grabbed my M4 and jumped through the hole and landed in the sewer water.

I felt something caked on my face as I pulled myself from under the muck and wiped it away as I began spitting into the water. I hoped that none of it was in my mouth, but it was open when I landed…

I pulled myself onto the concrete walkway on the side, still spitting shit out of my mouth. I looked up to see Francis and Zoey standing on either side of a closet while Bill entered with Francis's shotgun. I heard a loud bang and a scream, then he walked out with blood on the front of his jacket. Zoey looked at me plainly and said "Witch." Going through the sewer we came into a room with a bottle of painkillers and a Molotov on the floor. Louis pocketed both and gave us a look that said "What?" as we eyed him disgustedly. He screwed the lid off the pill bottle and threw two to Francis, who caught them.

"What? You are nasty man! I ain't eating shit pills from the sewer." Bill gave him a stern look that said "Oh yes you will" and Francis looked away defeated. Swallowing both, and nearly gagging, we set out again.

"Mercy Hospital should be right above us guys! I got a good feeling about this." Louis gestured to the manhole above us and I volunteered to go first. Peering over the lip of the hole I saw zombies roaming the street around the hospital. I climbed back down and reported.

Bill thought deeply for a moment, then looked up. "Alright, there's no way through this without a fight. Cal and me will draw them to us on one side, and Louis will take you two around the other. If we're still fighting when you get them to the safe room Louis, shut them in and come back out to help us. Keep sharp people, we'll do this in ten."

"Why not have Mr. ESP over here blast them away with his mind?" I shut my mouth as no one laughed. I cleaned my M4, still dirty after my fall as Louis came over to sit by me. "Hey man. You ready for this? Why are we waiting, and in a sewer of all places."

Louis thought for a moment. "I don't know man, I really don't know. I guess Bill just wants this to go off without a hitch and wants us rested?"

"Maybe. What's his deal anyway? Did he ever learn to smile?"

Louis lowered his voice to a whisper and glanced around before turning back to me. "Bill knows best man. He and Francis have had hard lives, so don't take it personally if they don't like you at first. Francis still doesn't like me."

"So Bill…was he military or something?"

"Yeah, he was in Vietnam. Lost some friends over there and doesn't want to talk about it. That's where he picked up the limp."

"How did you find out if he never talks about it?"

"Francis knew already man. He and Bill go way back, before this whole thing started."

A soft kick in the back startled me out of my focus. "Time to bond in the safe room guys, let's go." Zoey checked her rifle one more time and motioned me over to Bill.

"Ready kid?"

"Ready sir."

We scrambled up the ladder and ran to one side of the area. We opened fire, hitting any of the bastards that got close. I shot one and he crumpled to the ground holding his gut, and hit another in the leg sending him flying forward and into the pavement. He didn't get back up. "Reloading!" Bill threw suppressing fire down for me as the majority of the undead started to run at us. He yelled for the others to go and we them run behind the horde and into the hospital. Bill hit one in the face with the butt of his M-16 and finished it as it hit the ground.

I was so caught up in the battle I didn't realize the fat one sneaking up to the hospital in the background. Weird right? Louis ran out, weapon in hand, when the thing opened its mouth and green liquid spewed out and covered the businessman. The horde diverted its attention from us to him as he put some rounds into the things belly. It exploded in a shower of blood, the force knocking Louis onto his back.

Bill and I unloaded into the horde, but more came from the buildings all around and began to swarm to him. Plucking the Molotov from his belt, we immediately made for the hospital entrance as it became airborne. Bill just made it inside as it shattered, bathing the entire outside in flames. The puke had literally slid off Louis now as the horde ran through the flames. Charred hulks of flesh came through the fire, some dropping right at our feet while we watched. A roar and a shriek were heard simultaneously and a Hunter pounced on Bill from the wave of fire.

The hunter itself was on fire and Bill's clothes were beginning to smoke. I ran up and punched it in the back of the head sending it flying off Bill and back into the flames. My hand was singed and throbbing as the roar was made known again. Bill ducked just as a flaming fist came through the flames and into the space his head once occupied. The tank screamed again and began to flail, knocking over the supports to the overhead outside. Louis and I put rounds into it as Bill pulled himself off the floor as the concrete ceiling outside began to crumble. With a loud crash it collapsed into the fire, burying the tank underneath it. We dashed into the safe room out of breath and sat on the floor as the door slammed behind us.

Zoey was supporting herself on the wall, her face lined with worry. "What happened guys? I thought you were gone for sure!" She was trying to hide tears from us, but came over and put her head on Bill's shoulder. He looked at Louis and I and began to laugh. We started laughing too, and couldn't stop until Francis interrupted us again.

"So…was it fun?"

We started laughing again, and this time the others joined in too.

**Author's note: Chapter 3 is up! At the end, to erase any confusion, Zoey puts her head on Bill's shoulder because he is like a father to her. Anything else would be nasty. I know Francis wasn't funny in the end but bear with me. My parents were raised with no sense of humor and I have their genes. Please read and review, and tell me where I need to improve. Thanks guys!**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

End of the World as we Know It

We sat in the Mercy Hospital Safe room for a while. I guess we were all tired out from that crap in front of the hospital. There was no food this time and we had to put up with Francis complaining about it and hearing him say "I hate being hungry," every five minutes. Bill was on watch at the door leading into the actual hospital, watching the infected wander about outside and lost in his own silent thoughts. Zoey and Francis had drifted to sleep, but it was a miracle that Los Angeles didn't hear Francis snoring, much less the zombies outside our room. Louis and I were over by the door we entered through, checking and cleaning our weapons for lack of anything better to do.

He was putting 9mm rounds for his SMG into a dry clip and I was making sure my M4 was as clean as a hospital ward. Well, not the hospital we were in at the moment, but you get the picture. "Hey Louis, what did you do before all this?"

"I worked in the IT department of Franklin Brothers downtown with my friend Ray." Working that would have killed me faster than any of these things could. It just sounded so _boring_. "Do I even need to ask what you did?"

"I was part of the National Guard, did two tours overseas and I was going to leave next month, but this damn zombie apocalypse got in the way." We both laughed at that, like it was a funny joke you would hear some guy at work say on break or something. There wasn't much to laugh about these days. At the time I thought that was the only reason we kept Francis around.

Louis began talking again. "So what is the army doing about all this? Do they even know how bad it is?"

I looked away, yet again recalling the battle at the apartments. That shit was going to rule my mind if I didn't get it the fuck together. "No, probably not. You know them 'Hurry up and wait.' Same old shit as in the war."

"This _is_ a war son, don't mistake it for anything but." We glanced over at Bill, sitting in a chair and unmoving, never taking his eyes off the door with his M-16 in his lap, ready to fire.

We just slowly turned back to what we were doing, completely unsure how to respond to that. "So," Louis piped back in "you like video games?"

"You could say that. I spent a lot of my teen years playing them."

"Holy shit man, you ever play Half-Life?"

"Yeah, that and a lot of Doom." We spent the next half hour talking about games, what we liked or didn't like, and we really got along well. The only real thing Louis said he was worried about was how long it would take them to get Xbox Live up and running again after things went back to normal.

"Hey Cal, I'm going to hit the hay, alright?" I nodded to him and prepared to check my rifle again as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. A shout suddenly rang through the air and he nearly jumped to the ceiling.

Bill's voice thundered through the room. "ALRIGHT LADIES WE ARE MOVING! GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND STOW YOUR SHIT!" I literally fell out of my chair when he yelled that due to how loud it was. The zombies at the door began trying to reach through and grab him but that steel wasn't budging. In complete contrast to us Zoey slowly got up as if she had woken up from a nap completely unfazed by the cranky old man spewing insults and profanities at us. Francis still didn't wake up, I guess his snoring muffled it for him. You could hide a gunshot under his snoring.

Bill came over and kicked Francis in the chest, startling him awake. "Move it kid, we don't got any time to waste." Then he looked at us as Francis slowly, reluctantly, rose from the ground. "That chopper should still be around here but we can't afford to waste any more time. Francis, you take point with that shotgun of yours, Cal you get the rear, and the three of us will cover you from the center of the formation. Clear?" We all mumbled an affirmative as he lit another cigarette and without another word we began our trek through the hospital.

It was slow going. We had to clear every room we passed for fear of attacks from behind, but we never killed them all. More than once I had to take out straggling zombies poking their heads out of rooms looking in our direction. What we were doing was slow, but safe, and it took us awhile to reach the elevator on the fourth floor. Walking up the stairs Bill was muttering. "Goddamnit, stairs."

"Stairs are a good workout." Louis was trying to make the situation better. Would you expect any less from an optimist like him?

"I hate stairs." Francis hated everything he could lay his eyes on, but it was funny as hell to hear him say it.

"Then you and I are two, kid." That's why we took the elevator, because Bill's knee injury flared up badly on stairs. I guess it was also because we couldn't find any stairs for the life of us on the fourth floor that weren't destroyed or barricaded. We walked through a hallway with another barricade at the end of it, surrounded on all sides by alcoves with hospital beds in them with IV pouches filled with blood and "CONTAMINATED" stamped on all of them. Bodies lined the halls in various states of infection, all of them with either bite or scratch marks on them. They were all up against the wall with bullet holes and blood covering the plaster above them. I guess the army was shooting anyone who got hit.

We made it to the elevator, finding more piles of executed, infected civilians along the way. "Alright people, search these rooms but don't take too long. Stick together." We carried out Bill's orders and came up with some painkillers and two first aid kits, never opened. Francis and I made it back first and heard Zoey call out that they were coming back when Francis hit the button. The ground vibrated slightly, then a noise that almost sounded like a crash was heard followed by the tormented wails of an oncoming horde. In a second they were on us, cutting Francis and I off from Bill, Zoey, and Louis. The wall to our side collapsed as well as soon as I tried to put another clip into my rifle, and a punch to the gut sent it flying down the hall.

Francis began screaming at them, his face contorted in rage and fear at once. "GODDAMN VAMPIRES! What the hell kind of elevator makes this much fucking noise?" I was nearly certain I heard him say vampires, but instead of asking him about it I pulled out my handgun and kept shooting. A zombie hit Francis in his bad shoulder and he screamed, picked it up by the throat with one hand, and threw it back into the crowd. We heard the ding behind us as the elevator opened and the two of us stepped inside. I nearly pushed the button when I noticed something odd.

"FRANCIS," I yelled over the gunfire and screams, "WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?" It registered on his face a second before mine. The horde swarmed us before the other three could get back, and now they were cut off and alone or worse…

"Stay here brother! I forgot something at the end of the hall!" And with that he topped off his shotgun and stormed into the crowd, using his bad shoulder to help clear the way. In a second he was enveloped in the mass of bodies rushing down the hall. His laughing could be heard above the din off battle along with his swearing and insults toward the "vampires" that he was yelling at. The horde cleared out slightly and I glanced him on the other side of it holding his auto-shotgun by the barrel like a club, and using it as such. My Berretta spit bullets down the hallway striking the zombies running for Francis. The biker began pushing back toward me with three figures behind him firing into the crowd. A hunter leaped down from the vent in the ceiling and pounced straight at him, but the butt of his shotgun connected with its face in midair and it hit the ground in front of him.

"COME ON!" That all you got?" He was laughing and taunting the horde as he made his way to me with the other three in tow, swinging his shotgun like mad. A fat one came up from behind, looked at Louis, then puked. The boomer showered him and Bill with bile and the zombies immediately changed direction. I immediately ran out to help them, reloading my handgun, and plunged into yet _another_ horde that had just showed up and was heading for my friends. It was like a mosh pit among the cold bodies and I was pushed, punched, and kicked at least fifty times. I reached the group just as Francis swung his shotgun yet again, but this time it slammed into the head of one of the zombies and damn near snapped in half.

The surprise on his face was so sudden and blaring that he didn't have time to the bullet that grazed his arm and ultimately sent him face first to the floor. Bill grabbed something from Louis's belt at that moment and began shouting. "Come on you big stupid bastards! Follow me!" With that he lit the pipe bomb in his hand and ran toward the hole in the wall next to the elevator. There were way to many zombies around us to throw it, or throw anything for that matter. It was still hard to see him do that. He was nearly suicidal.

Zoey nearly flipped when she saw this and actually began fighting through to horde to him_ on her own_. This all happened in the span of about two seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to me. She cleared a hole just barely small enough through the horde so Bill could throw the pipe bomb down the corridor and the horde went screaming after it. Bill and Zoey picked up Francis and headed to the elevator with Louis and I covering them. As they passed us Francis meekly tapped my arm and handed me something. "You forgot something too soldier Boy…" The bomb detonated and sent zombie parts flying back at us through the hole as we turned and ran through the elevator doors. I slammed the button and we began to rise.

Bill was the first to speak. "Even being in a war don't prepare you for this. They just keep coming at you and they never goddamn stop."

"Game over man, game over!" Louis Zoey and I laughed at that while Bill swore, something about those "damn kids these days" if I'm right. Francis was cradling his wounded arm- again – as Bill took out the supplies from the first aid we found. Yet again Francis was lecturing Bill on how to properly "administer that bandage thingy" on his arm, and told him not to "strain my phalanx with that piss poor technique you're using, old man."

We were at the 10th floor. "Zoey, Bill, Cal, when this is over I'm going to get you three jobs. Francis, I'm going to teach your ass how to read!" We all laughed at that, except for Francis who responded in kind. "And I'm going to teach your ass how to shoot straight."

"Man, I hate hospitals. I hate helicopters. I hate elevators. And doctors, and lawyers, and cops…"

Bill finished wrapping his arm and helped him stand up. "Francis, is there anything you don't hate?"

"You know what I don't hate? I don't hate vests."

"The zombies seem to."

"I ain't gonna let these goddamn vampires beat me."

Bill put his face in his palm as we prepared to disembark. "They're zombies Francis."

I threw the biker my handgun and some mags as the doors slid open. "Whatever."

The construction area was surprisingly sparse of zombies or "vampires" or whatever you want to call them. We made our way to the safe room and sat down as we barricaded the way behind us. Bill checked on the four of us as we rested and Zoey began handing ammo to us. I walked over to Francis and took off his blood stained dressings to replace them with new ones. Louis was in the corner making another pipe bomb. "Hey man, thanks for getting my gun back."

He snorted. "That ain't how you do it, let me- DAMNIT!" I tried to suppress my smile as I put his new, cleaner dressing back on and he clenched his fist in pain. Bill walked over, smiling himself, holding a brand new shotgun in his hands. He set it next to Francis. "Don't break this one too. These things are hard to come by these days." I tried not to laugh again before he turned his now weathered gaze to me. "And don't_ lose _yours either."

I left Francis and walked over to Louis, who promptly put a pipe bomb in my hands. I put it in my belt as he began working on another and he struck up a conversation that we probably shouldn't have had. "Hey Cal, you got any family around here?"

"No. My parents live up in Oregon next to the coast where I was raised. What about you?"

"You sure as hell don't sound like it, and no. My mom died in a car accident two years ago, and my dad was an alcoholic who left home when I was ten. I became the man of the house after that. What about any friends?" His face took on a tone I never thought to see in him, sadness and even a little anger.

I remembered the phone call with Samantha one week ago and how she could be dead for all I knew. "That's because I was born in Canada, and yeah. In Riverside my friend has a house with her parents. That's not far enough away is it?"

He finished the second pipe bomb. "I don't think anywhere is far enough away."

"Alright girls, that's enough time. We're moving." Bill took point this time as we covered Francis in the middle of our formation. We walked through the hallway and came to the elevator shaft. We crawled through a small grate leading to the edge of the shaft and began climbing up the ladders. We could see the sky now, we were within arm's reach of safety! Bill climbed out first and looked around, signaling us to come up. Francis struggled a bit but made it with no help from us, insisting he was fine. Ever since I learned that we were heading this way, I wondered what I would see up here. A full corner of the helipad was destroyed with no sign of the helicopter. It must have fallen off after the crash and landed on the side of the building we didn't come from. Zombies, both civilian and military, littered the helipad as Zoey and Louis began picking them off.

"Hold up guys, There's something I have to do." Louis stayed with me as I searched the bodies looking for dog tags. I found many of them, but not the ones I was looking for. I couldn't find Captain Jensen's body anywhere, which filled me with hope and dread. He could be alive…or he could have turned into one of them and wandered off. He was the last survivor from my unit, if he was alive, the last man I'd served with in the war. He was a good officer with a family living in Iowa that he wanted to go back to.

"Cal, I think the others are ready. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No. I have no idea if that's good or bad."

We jogged over the small building on the roof, complete with a weapon's locker, ammo, first aid supplies and a minigun. Bill was making more plans as he surveyed our supplies and position. "Louis, you and me will go out and look for more supplies, maybe we can set some traps or something. Cal, you know how to use that minigun?" I shook my head. "Don't that just figure? Ok, we can-"

"I'll do it." Francis was standing now on his own power, drawing from the seemingly infinite well of stamina he possessed. "Just show me where the trigger is."

"Ok then. We'll call the chopper when Louis and me get back. That bird's gonna make a hell of a racket when it comes in so we need to be prepared. Cal, get up there and find the trigger on that beast with Francis. This building is our holdout people so if you get snatched or pounced or _anything_ call out. Stick together, keep a cool head, and we'll make it out of this hell hole. Clear? Good." I got Francis set up on the gun upstairs and began hauling the ammo up while Zoey was taking the weapons up, and set a few near each of our positions so we could grab one and keep firing if we didn't have time to reload. I heard Bill on the radio down below and he shouted up to me. "Cal! What was the hospital's call sign?"

"No idea! Take a guess, if it even matters anymore!"

"This is Mercy One to any aircraft in the area, we have some…uh…"

He went back to trying to convince any aircraft in the area to pick us up, after all, we didn't know if the original chopper was still around.

He came back up with the last of the supplies from below, his pockets stuffed with ammo and a propane tank in each hand. Hank Hill would have been proud. "I called the chopper. There's a Blackhawk on the way with full escort. I managed to convince them that I was the Colonel in charge of the EVAC." We both chuckled while the others started at us, not getting the joke. Military humor, am I right?

The horde began its assault and Francis opened up with the minigun. Shouting more profanities and insults much of the horde fell before making it halfway. We kept the special infected off his back and he kept the common ones off ours. We were doing well until we heard a mechanical clicking sound. "Aw shit…" Francis slapped the minigun as a new horde began to charge. As they grew closer he began kicking it while the rest of us opened up with our rifles. They began to claw at the doors we closed on the ground level and started spilling into the stairwell. "Bill! The stairs!" Louis ran into the stairwell followed by Bill and they each took turns firing while the other reloaded. The zombies were climbing now, coming from both directions while Francis was still trying to get the gun to work. A smoker appeared on the helipad and its tongue shot at Zoey like a bullet. She moved just in time, but it snatched the gun right out of her hands.

With no weapon to defender herself with she was swarmed in seconds. I threw my pipe bomb and shot the stragglers that didn't run for it. Zoey helped herself up and grabbed one of the spare guns, an M-16, next to her. Out of nowhere a thundering roar cascaded throughout the rooftop and a huge block of cement flew at us. Francis dived right as it slammed into the minigun destroying it and a portion of the building. Grasping his shotgun he turned to face the tank that was advancing, no visible fear on his face.

Another horde had come from behind, and now we were joined by Bill and Louis. The tank tried climbing but we unloaded our weapons into his face. We didn't see them behind us, or the hunter that pounced on Bill until it was far too late. It degenerated into hand to hand combat, and I took out my knife as I heard Bill screaming. "Get it off! Get it off!"

They just kept coming and coming, and Bill was screaming and screaming. I saw blood fly but was swarmed an instant later shortly before the screaming abruptly stopped. I lost my knife in the chest of one of them, a woman bleeding from her eyes. I was punched in the head more than once and collapsed on my back as they closed in. I didn't know what to do, we were overrun. For a split second I was blinded by a light, and then the zombies all ran back to the helipad. The light was from the helicopter as it circled overhead, with its speakers blaring.

"_Six O'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign towers-"_

Bill stood up, almost unscathed but with a fearful look in his eyes as another tank roared.

"_Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate, light a candle light a motive-"_

"GET TO THE LZ PEOPLE!" We ran down the stairs and sprinted to the chopper with another horde surrounding us, but they were focusing on the noise that the helicopter was spewing.

"_A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies-"_

As we edged closer I saw that the helicopter was hovering past the edge and that many of the zombies were running off the building and falling to their deaths below. That bastard was a genious! We set up on the helipad as the chopper hovered closer. We opened fire cutting down the zombies running at us, as the ones running past us were still falling off the building. The tank roared again and more concrete flew at us, narrowly missing the helicopter.

"_Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline."_

The tank wasn't tricked by the music, unlike the others. He ran at us and we opened up. Louis lit the pipe bomb and cooked it like a grenade. He threw it and the tank stumbled when it detonated as we continued to fire.

"_IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"_

The song made the whole experience almost supernatural in a way. It was the only thing I could really hear, nearly blocking out everything else. It was close now and the zombies were running at it. The pilot's window opened and a handgun was shoved out and began firing. The tank was upon us now, almost looming over us.

"_IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"_

Some common infected jumped from the roof, two of them landing in the rotors. They were cut to pieces and the result was showered on us. Zoey shot three dead with her rifle to my left while Francis loaded his shotgun and fired at the tank again. I chambered a round and went full auto along with Francis trying to take down the behemoth. Bill and Louis were shooting the infected on the flanks as they closed in from all sides.

The helicopter hovered a foot above the ground behind us, and the rotor wash blew the cigarette from Bill's lips, and Zoey's ponytail came undone and her hair flew everywhere. My helmet wasn't secured and was lost in the windstorm. The tank's fist rose to strike, and the beast seemed to be the Spectre of Death as it loomed above us.

"_IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! And I feel fiiiiine…"_

We jumped into the helicopter as the muscled fist slammed into the helipad where we just were. The helicopter pulled away from that Hell Hospital with Francis, Louis, and I still pumping lead down on the infected below. Through the rain we could see the silhouette of the tank raise its fists and slam the ground in frustration.

The pilot switched the music off and we sat down. "Damnit, I loved that song."

"Did anyone else hear Francis say that?" I joked, trying and cope. I had come closer to dying than I ever had before. I kicked back and closed my eyes. We were finally safe.

"I thought this was a Blackhawk? This thing's just a damn news chopper."

The pilot spoke up, his voice quivering. "Yeah, and I thought you were a damn soldier or something. We laughed.

"My soldiering days are over son. Thanks for coming to save us."

A gunshot echoed throughout the helicopter's cabin and the pilot screamed an almost demonic, inhuman scream. My eyes snapped open as I saw his hands drop from around Zoey's neck. The helicopter plummeted from the air and smoke clouded our vision. The last thing I saw was the ground rushing up to meet us from the window, and everyone reaching for something to hold on to.

A jolt of pain shot through my leg and up to my head. Then nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Back to Reality

"NO!" I began thrashing around and a pair of hands locked onto my arms. "YOU BASTARDS!" I don't know what's going on. The pair of arms drags me to the floor and a great weight holds me to the floor. I open my eyes for the first time, and I can see them. Blood is leaking from their eyes and ears as they stare down at me and a voice seems to boom from the heavens.

"Sedate him Archer. He's having another episode." I can't let them do it, the needle brings them back and I can't face them alone.

"I can't keep hold of him boss!" One draws his fist back and slams it into my face and pain shoots through me. I stop thrashing but I keep screaming because now I can feel them. They are close, I need to run, I need to get out of here. Something punctures my neck and my struggles renew even though it's hopeless. I try my hardest to keep my eyes from shutting but I can't. My eyes slide shut and I can hear the screams and see the flames before oblivion takes me. I hear the voice again, fading into the distance and eventually lost among the chaos of my own mind. "Take him back to his cell. We shall resume in the morning…"

"What the hell was that?"

"I assure you Agent, "Smith", was it? I assure you that that was a completely normal occurrence. Mr. Callahan has a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and can easily confuse reality with his own little world. His mind is in shambles after what he saw out there."

"Smith" crossed his arms and walked out of the interrogation room going to meet the doctor on the other side of the intercom. He took his sunglasses off and placed them on the table before leaving and waited until the orderlies had escorted Cal out of the room. The young veteran's words struck a chord with him, he thought, as he walked down the hallway to meet the doctor. He was no stranger to violence as he had been in the middle of the Fall of Kansas City, as it was called. His covert mission there had brought his mind and body to the limits of human endurance and while he had managed to pull back from the edge, he witnessed many who couldn't. The memories sent shivers through him and he leaned against the wall, suddenly out of breath. It was in the past, he told himself, they couldn't get to him through the Rocky Mountains. But that's what they said about the Mississippi River to…

"Need any help agent?" The doctor was beside him, a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and an unnatural smile plastered to his face. "Here we deal specifically with troubled veterans from the war. Would you like to sit down with me?" The smile never left his face as he sipped his drink and followed Smith down the hall.

"No."

"You're not a very talkative one, are you Smith?"

"No." He kept walking, not looking back. Something about the doctor was wrong, very wrong, but he just couldn't place it. "So when is Cal going to be ready for another interview?"

"In the morning, like I said. Is this really important, that you find out what happened to that base?" A brief look of worry crossed the doctor's face as he said it, but disappeared as Smith finally turned to face him.

"Yes."

"But the entire East Coast was overrun in a month and all bases were lost. Even the Echo Safe Zone up in Pennsylvania was lost by the end of the fourth week, and they were prepared to fight World War 3 up there." Smith grimaced as the doctor stated this factually, no remorse or grief or sadness over the tens of millions of lives lost in on the east coast, now turned into shambling, bloodthirsty demons.

"That doesn't matter. We needed as much information as we could on those damn carriers! Maybe there could be a cure or something else that would have prevented this!"

"Agent," the doctor said in a low and foreboding voice, "you have the cure in your holster." Smith reached into his coat and felt the holster containing his weapon within. Fully loaded, cleaned, ready to be fired. If only he could fire it right now and wipe that look off his counterpart's face. He hadn't done what he'd done, gone through what he'd gone through. This college professor probably didn't know any more about the infection than Smith himself knew about leading a normal, pre-outbreak life. Images of his first sanctioned assassination flashed through his mind, and he realized that he could well be next if he was discovered here by his superiors.

"I'll be back tomorrow, 8 A.M. sharp. He better be ready by then."

The old doctor merely smiled again. "He'll be ready by then agent."

Smith threw him a final, questioning, glance as he walked out the front doors of the clinic into the cool nighttime breeze of the Colorado night. Sticking to the shadows and alleyways of the once bustling city he left the vicinity of the mental clinic, passing a few military check points along the way. Finally reaching a safe location he pulled out his cell phone, a luxury that few people had nowadays. One of the more ancient models, quite different from the ones of pre-outbreak fashion, it would have been an ugly thing to look at back then. Checking his watch, not the clock on the phone in order to conserve the battery, he dialed one of the three numbers he had been provided with at the beginning of his mission, each one leading to the same source, but signaling his distress level, depending on which number he dialed. Dialing the standard one a gruff voice came from the other side. "Smith? Sitrep, now."

"Sir? What? I can't hear you." The reception on these ancient things was shit, and that was a complement compared to the other things he was thinking of saying about it. He remembered when the CIA had some of the most advanced surveillance and communication equipment in the world, back before almost all of the modern technology had fallen flat on its ass during the outbreak and the retreat back west. The only things that maintained any value were guns and fuel, both of which had now skyrocketed from two years ago. If you had one or the other you were a god, but if you were one of the people who had both, and enough of each, you could do whatever the hell you wanted and the only people who could do anything about_ that_, being what was left of the government, could be bent to your will if you played your cards right. The only people left in perimeter towns, like Denver, were the soldiers assigned to keep the infected from spilling into the last concentrated pocket of humanity left in North America and those who had neither one.

Moving into another area, slightly more open and slightly less compromising than the one he had just left, he tried again. The signal faded in and out but it was enough to serve his needs. "Sir? The city guards report less infected activity outside the perimeter." Gunshots echoed through the streets for a few brief seconds, followed by soldiers shouting that the attackers were dead. "Clearance to pass through is on the way, but slow coming."

The gruff voice on the other end grunted in dissatisfaction. "We can't afford to wait any longer son. Do I need to remind you of what was on that chopper?"

"No sir, sorry sir."

"Anything else to report agent?"

"No sir." Smith held his breath for a split second in anticipation. If the chief found out about where he had been today…

"You've been staying away from that clinic, right son?"

Shit. "Yes sir."

"Good. We'll have a team out there in 6 days time, and if there's no clearance by then threaten to quarantine the city. That usually gets results. We have a contact for you as well to aid in our efforts. Meet him here." He looked at the address that was sent to the phone via text. It was only 15 minutes away if he walked.

"Alright chief." He turned off the phone then shut it. "That was close." He walked out onto the street, long vacant of functioning cars and slipped into the crowd gathering around for the nightly roll call. Each citizen was assigned to a district in the city and given a corresponding number. At. 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. every day they went to the indicated meeting point of their district for a roll call. This was done in order to tally civilian losses in attacks by infected as any citizen not present was considered dead. Any citizen found skipping roll would be severely punished.

Such was the way with towns along the perimeter these days. Urban sites in California and Oregon and the like didn't have to worry about this, but thankfully neither did Smith. He was here on a government sanctioned mission that would take him outside the "safety" of this rundown refugee camp of a city and into "Indian Country" as the higher ups had designated it. His mission was a vital one, but after he found out who was in the Augustus Mental Clinic he couldn't resist a visit to get the conviction he needed.

He approached the address he was given by the chief, a large motel in its former life and now civilian quarters 2B for district Blue in the former city of Denver, Colorado. Walking up to the second floor he located the room he was looking for and stepped inside. On the floor were bedrolls made from curtains and blankets with the bed being used only for the infirm or young, such as it was throughout most of the poorer districts like this. He saw people nearly starved, sick, tired, and defeated. He only noticed the man in the corner because he looked _alive_ compared to these people, but that wasn't saying much. His hair had grown down past his shoulders and was a dirty mess with dirt and bits of trash in it. His beard looked as if he had attempted to shave it with only middling results, but no one cared about appearances these days as long as they were alive. Upon hearing the door open the man in the corner looked up revealing long symmetrical scars on his face running from his lower right side to his left eye.

"Son of a bitch…" Smith stammered as his contact walked over to meet him. The man grumbled in a deep voice.

"Looks like we got some catching up to do Jerry." He led Smith back outside and they disappeared into the cold night. 

"Cal…" The voices, they won't stop and I can't make them stop, oh god why is this happening to me, what have I done? For the millionth time I stand in front of the store as gunfire explodes from the inside. I stand there and back away and begin to shake until I hear her scream from inside, and then I run to save her. Bodies are strewn over the floor, some still twitching when she screams again. I break the door down and see three of the bastards on her with blood spurting from the pile of matter that used to be a human being. I raise my weapon to shoot them, to try and save her but when I pull the trigger it only clicks. They can hear it and they turn around, aware. Instead of attacking me they walk past into the night, their demonic laughing blocking the rest of the world out. I go to her side as she gasps and wheezes in pain but I can't do anything about it. They left me here instead of killing me because they knew that this would do more damage than anything they could physically inflict upon me.

A voice fills my head and the laughter dies. _It's all your fault._ No it isn't! _You let me die. You hate me._ No I don't! _You let me down._ There was nothing I could do! _You let your friends down._ It wasn't my fault! _You're a failure and this is your punishment._ What did I do? Why do I deserve this?

The bleeding girl in front of me breaths her last with blood pooling all around her. I turn to the door and the evil laughter returns as the woman's blood slides up the walls covering them like a fresh coat of crimson paint. I turn to the door and pull out my pistol, pointing it at me head. Click.

I drop the empty pistol to the floor as her voice enters my head again. _There is no escape from yourself._ I turn back to her and she is standing right behind me, close enough for me to feel her breath if she were breathing. Her eyes are completely white and blood runs from her mouth and nose as she grins malevolently and lunges.

"Son of a bitch!" I fly up from the floor and look around seeing only my padded cell. The familiar screaming of the other patients slowly fills in the quiet void as my mind begins to slip back into reality. It was the dream again, the dream I always have when they sedate me. I drag myself into the corner and my eyes grow heavy. I can't go back to sleep because I know what is waiting for me inside my own head.

"I gotta get out of this fucking place."

**Author's Note: So yeah, Chapter 5. I'm trying this new way of writing with this story so I can more easily let on what is happening with the country at large by this point. This same format was used in Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, a really awesome book about stopping a (you guessed it) zombie outbreak! I'm going to try this from now on, go through one of the campaigns then have one chapter in the present time. If it got hard to follow near the end, or when it switches perspectives, let me know so I can try to make it better in the future, or just scrap the whole thing and have Cal just tell his story non-stop from here on out. Please review because I want to know how I can make this story better!**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The Story Continues

Smith walked into the room he had interviewed Cal in the day before suppressing a yawn. With barely two hours of sleep he wasn't at the top of his game, but then again not many people were these days. The young veteran was sitting in the chair as he had the day before, staring off into space with his mind somewhere else. "Cal? You in there?" Smith snapped his fingers in front of the young man's face a few times before he snapped out of his trance much like someone being startled from behind. "Shall we begin?" The orderlies took up positions on either side of Cal, arms crossed and ready to intervene should the need arise, as it almost certainly would.

"Cal?" He seemed more distant than the day before and began muttering under his breath, talking to himself. Whatever help he needed here he obviously wasn't getting, aside from that drug.

The young man spoke up without looking up. "What's your name?"

"Smith."

"That's weird. I thought your name started with an S, but ended in head, you stupid-" One of the orderlies put a hand on his shoulder to remind him where they were and he finally looked up. The tone in his voice was much more somber now, almost all the fire he had seen yesterday had vanished overnight. He resumed his story from the day before, and his eyes looked into that distant place he was trying to remember…

2 YEARS AGO

OUTSKIRTS OF RIVERSIDE, PENNSYLVANIA

I can't remember much about the crash itself, only the ground rushing up to meet us through the pilot's window. The first thing I do remember is standing in a small clearing in the woods, dazed and bleeding with shell casing littering the ground around me. I squinted my eyes and could barely make out my footprints coming from the east side of the clearing. A few bodies of infected lay around me one of which was still twitching. Judging by how many casings were at my feet I used much more ammo than I should have, a mistake that was probably going to kill me. I glanced around but I couldn't see any of the others, or any trace that they had been here. Realizing how dangerous it was being alone with no cover I stumbled back into the woods looking for a landmark that might tell me where I was.

It wasn't long before I found the river and the campsites. Trailers, RVs, tents, you name it. Who would be camping at this time of year I had no idea, but people are just plain unpredictable at times. I scrounged through some of them looking for supplies I could use. In the darkness the old campsites were still as recognizable as they were when I was a child. My few friends from school and I used to come into these woods all the time to play, and that included sneaking into the campgrounds to see if anyone had left anything we wanted. We never stole much, just a few dollars there and here, maybe something else we wanted, but we never took anything important, and that's what counts, right?

I took the time to analyze my situation and how I had come to be in it. I assume that in my stupor from the crash I had somehow wandered from wherever we landed into the woods, Maybe I had a concussion and that was why I couldn't remember, I don't know. After looking at my supplied I learned that I was down to 5 magazines for my M4 and 3 for my pistol. I found a crowbar in the back of a rundown pickup with the red paint having been weathered by the elements, among other things. I took it with me and followed the river to my old hometown, anxious to see what had become of it. I reached the wall within an hour, a hastily constructed and poorly built wall, but a wall nonetheless. It was just good enough to keep me from climbing over it with sharp stakes protruding from it, to stop attackers I assumed. The top was strung with razor wire and broken glass from what I could make out but the darkness hindered my vision. I would have given anything for a pair of NVGs at that moment, or even a flashlight.

I strolled around the wall until I found an opening. A bus, armored with razor wire and steel plating, had crashed through the wall from the inside in what I guessed was an attempt to escape whatever was going on inside the town. The windows were streaked with blood and something was pounding on the inside as I approached. There was an opening between the escape vehicle and the wall large enough for me to squeeze through, and when I emerged a feeling of dread washed over me. The town was completely black, not even the streetlights were running. The only illumination was the moon, but it had retreated behind the clouds 10 minutes before. I made my way through the darkened streets littered with buses and cars until I came upon a sandbagged position.

A .50cal had been positioned here, but it was now broken and twisted. 4 bodies were strung along the makeshift barricade with all of them wearing army uniforms. I checked each corpse for ammo, finding enough to get me by. I picked up one of their weapons, an M4 like mine but with a flashlight attached to it. I looked the weapon over and examined it extensively before I was convinced it was in a well enough condition to fire. Swapping it out for my old one I went up the street searching anything I thought would be worthwhile along the way.

The odd thing about my surroundings was the lack of zombies, a strange thing to say two weeks ago. Bodies and wrecked cars littered the street and trash blew freely through the nighttime breeze as I approached a familiar home. A car was parked on the lawn with all the doors open and the rear windshield smashed inward. The door was barricaded and as I drew closer I noticed more bodies on the lawn, leading up to the front door as everything grew quiet. I began sweating as I worked my way to the back yard and up to the sliding glass door that was to serve as my second entryway. It was locked so I slid a set of keys out of my pocket, and upon finding the right one, I opened the door and slid it slowly and carefully to the side.

The house was a mess with books and paper lying all over the floor in addition to other things. A soft glow emanated from the living room and I readied my weapon as I crept nearer. The closer I drew I began noticing a soft noise from the room, a man's voice informing people of measures to take to insure safety from the infected and a muffled whimpering sound. I poked my head around the corner and saw that the TV was on and tuned into one of the emergency broadcast channels. Evacuation points rolled across the bottom of the screen as the man's voice droned on, softly with the TV being on a very low volume. On the couch I saw a still figure illuminated only by the glow of the TV in an otherwise dark home. The figure was alive, their chest rising slowly up and down and a pillow covering their face. I silently paced over with my weapon raised, just in case, and rapidly tore the pillow from the figure's grasp.

The woman screamed before my hand covered her mouth, the yell shattering the stillness of the town's blanket of silence. Her eyes narrowed at me and she began to struggle free as I put a finger up to my mouth, the universal symbol for silence. As her eyes adjusted she relaxed and I took my hand away she stood up with her back to me and began wiping away the tears she didn't want me to see. Without warning she swung herself back to me and embraced me, her whimpering beginning again. In that same instant someone began pounding on the door and without a word I ushered her into the basement and rushed, silently of course, to the window. A glance outside showed me an infected man in a police uniform pounding his fists against the door as more from the surrounding shadows came to join him. I threw furniture and anything else I could find against the door in a haste, with the noise of my labor enticing them even more. When I had done all I could I went to the basement and locked the door behind me and slowly crept down the stairs in utter darkness. As I reached the floor I switched on my attached flashlight and shone it around the room, finally coming to rest on my new companion her eyes wide with relief as I set my rifle on the table next to me.

I walked over and sat down next to her. My body felt completely drained of energy and I could barely speak let alone move of my own free will. I closed my eyes and nearly nodded off before she nudged my shoulder, a look in her eyes that urged me to stay awake. I did the only thing I could think of at that point and I struck up an interrogation. "Why didn't you leave like everyone else?"

"They didn't leave!" She was shouting in that whispering way that lets you know that they're mad while they are trying to be quiet. "Who do you think is trying to get in right now?"

"Well why did _you_ stay here? That's what I wanted to know!" Now I was whisper shouting, it was a giant whisper argument.

"We tried! We were loading up the car in the middle of a giant massacre! The army was shooting anyone that came at them funny and those monsters, the infected people, were tearing everyone to shreds _literally!_ A girl was walking through it all with her head in her hands and crying so dad went over to see what he could do. As soon as he touched her shoulder her hand came up and tore him in half while mom took the shotgun out of the car. We both screamed and infected that were ignoring us and fighting other people took notice and rushed at us. We ran to the house but one of the special ones caught mom's foot with its tongue and dragged her back into a swarm of those things! I locked the house up and waited for the shooting to stop. It took hours, but when it finally died down I looked outside and…and…" She looked at the ground and held herself before she continued. "They were everywhere. Bodies were all over the street and now they were attacking the houses! A bus with armor all over it drove past with about 20 people on board and disappeared around the corner with a horde of those things tailing it. I turned off all the lights and stayed quiet since then. That was three days ago."

"So is there anyone else you know of that might have survived?"

"Maybe… I don't know!"

"I'm sorry Samantha, I really am, but we have to focus, okay? Take this." I gave my sidearm to her along with some ammo. "I'm going to check upstairs and see what's going on. Don't use that unless you have to, okay?" She nodded to me, and then I took my rifle and ascended the staircase leaving the flashlight with her. Fear was a lot more dangerous than a horde of infected and she needed the light more than I did. When I reached the main floor I noticed that the door had been practically shattered and the TV was now destroyed with wisps of smoke coming from the broken screen. Since we weren't the only ones here anymore I went back downstairs and got her. "We need to move. Is there anywhere we can go?"

"You remember how to get to the river, right? Maybe we can get a boat and head over to Newburg. The TV said they were evacuating people to a safe zone to the north and the infection hadn't reached the city yet."

"Sounds like a plan." I didn't hold any hope of Newburg being safe when we reached, if we reached it. Philly had been overrun in less than a week and since New burg was almost as big there were potentially a million zombies waiting for us if we were wrong. Riverside was a bust though and staying here was certain death, compared to heading to Newburg which was only probable death. We exited the house, careful not to make any noise that would alert the uninvited house guests who were lurking somewhere in the shadows. We made it to the street when she stopped. She bent to the ground and came back up with a shotgun, an auto loader by the looks of it like the one Francis had used. I jogged to the car in the front yard and after looking through the trunk's contents I came back with a couple boxes of shotgun shells for the same weapon. Handing them to her we continued down the street heading in the direction of the church.

I knew Riverside like the back of my hand and it almost felt like I was a kid again, going out after dark with Samantha and my other friends and raising hell when we thought we could get away with it, which, of course, we never managed. Neither of us spoke after leaving her house, more out of fear of breaking the silence than revealing our position. Along the way we passed humvees, buses, cars, even semi trucks, all broken down and destroyed. At our slow peace it took us nearly two hours to get to our shortcut to the river, the one that only we knew about. If we were lucky, then it would be devoid of infected and we could quietly slip out of town. To get to it we had to go through the warehouse behind the convenience store across from the church, but after that it should have been smooth sailing.

As we approached we say that the church's lights were still on, seemingly the only place in the town with working power. In darkness light stands out, so we avoided it altogether and made straight for our shortcut. Inside the warehouse we found the entrance, a small hole in the wall leading to the abandoned and boarded up warehouses behind this one. "Remember when we used to come through here with Dusty and the others?"

She began to relax and we let our guard down in the presence of familiarity and pleasant memories. "Yeah, I remember the time you cried because you thought you were going to lose your leg." She giggled as I began to clear the crates away from the hole, our own camouflage so no one would find it.

"Did you see how much blood there was?"

She laughed again. "You scraped your knee!" I puched away the last of the crates and peered inside, but something was off. I turned on the flashlight and looked a second time.

They were all over, at least 50 of them wandering around. Bodies were piled up all around, and on the far side of the room I could make out more sandbags and another .50cal blocking one of the open doors which had been used as an entrance. Many of the infected were in military uniforms, and many of the bodies rested against bloodstained, bullet scarred walls in rows. I quickly pulled back and shoved the crates against the hole again as Sam readied her shotgun. "Not this way." I tried to put on a smile, but failed miserably as we left the warehouse. Now we had to go through the streets and alleys to reach the river and for all we knew a thousand zombies were waiting for us on our route.

We never got the chance to find out. As soon as that thought entered my head the church bells began ringing and gunfire erupted from the same direction. Then above it all came the scream of the horde, surging from all directions to the church. I heard the cry of a hunter and the wheezing of a smoker as what seemed to me a thousand pairs of eyes diverted their attention from the church, and looked straight at us.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Nightmare

"Hey, there's lights on in that church!"

"Thank you Captain Obvious." As Bill walked by he slapped Francis in the back of the head, continuing on without looking back. "What the hell Bill?"

"Don't talk to Zoey like that again." With that the Green Beret raised his M-16 and took aim. He gave a sharp whistle as his comrades readied their own weapons and the infected milling about the graveyard looked up. They charged at the group with hunger in their eyes and bloodlust in their hearts as the survivors opened fire. In five seconds it was over and the four humans reloaded their weapons. Zoey looked around and gave a drawn out whistle.

"We're getting good at this." She looked over to Louis expecting a positive remark from him but none came. He continued on with Francis and Bill toward the church. The manager, as Francis nicknamed him, had become silent since the helicopter crash. In the short time he and cal had known each other they became good friends, one of the few bright spots in this bleak apocalypse. "You okay Louis?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I bet the military is just waiting for people like us to come through here."

"Let me guess. You got a good feeling about _this_ too?"

"Damn right I do Francis. Teaching you to read once this is over though, that's got me a little worried." Zoey and Louis both chuckled while Francis turned back to the front, muttering curses and insults as he did so. On any other day, a normal day, they would have never _dared_ talking to the intimidating Hell's Legion biker that stood in front of them, god forbid insulting him. But the apocalypse brought them all down to the same level in the past two weeks, and unfortunately for Francis they had made a sport of it.

"Hold up people." Bill raised his right hand in the air and formed a fist as he crouched. They did the same and listened closely. "Hear that?"

Louis was the first. "Yeah, it sounds like a person. A living person! See Francis, I told you I had a good feeling about this!"

"Yeah yeah yeah." His words dripped with sarcasm. "Hey maybe it's our long lost soldier buddy from Philly? Hey, maybe he has a cure? Holy shit, maybe he can even age Bill back a few centuries and make him young again!"

"You know who's gonna survive this thing Francis? It ain't the guy who's making jokes." Francis smirked his cocky smirk as they hustled into the church. The interior was in shambles, but they saw another safe room inside. "I think it's coming from in here." Bill knocked and was greeted with a startled yelp from the inside.

The voice was quivering with fear as it responded. "Hello? W-who's out there? Are you human?"

"We're as human as they come son, I promise you. We're also cold, tired, and there's infected in the damn woods, now cut out the shit and let us in!"

"NO! Not until I know for sure!"

Francis pushed his way past Bill and stopped at the door. "We're cops! Open up!"

"I've got a bell in here! Prove it!"

"Well I'm Officer Francis, that's Grandpa Bill, and _there's zombies out here open the goddamn door!_"

"No! You don't sound like cops!" They heard him moving around inside the room and talking to himself. Francis gave it one last try.

"Come on, have a heart! We got a helpless old man with us!"

"HEY!"

The church bells began to ring and a roar resonated throughout the church. "I don't think that cop thing worked."

Over the din of the bells Zoey shouted at him. "Hey JERKASS! We can _make_ you open that door!"

"Take aim people!" Bill focused to the darkness outside the church as the horde swiftly approached and adjusted his rifle sights. "This guy's nuttier than candy bar shit." In the next moment a flood of bodies surged from the darkness and the survivors opened fire.

Zoey slung her hunting rifle over her back and took out two Colt 1911s. "HUNTER!" The hooded figure leaped through the doorway and lunged at Louis, who rolled to the left just as it landed. It swiped at him but he ducked, another swipe and he jumped back. The wall collapsed behind him and a boomer vomited all over him.

"Why the hell do they always go after me?" He wiped his eyes with one hand and wielded his Uzi with the other. The infected around him fell as Zoey charged the boomer and shoved it back. She took aim and sent two rounds through its belly and the monster exploded in a shower of bile and blood. The infected became confused as it splattered over the ground and many of them stopped attacking and looked around. Using their moment of reprieve the four dispatched the infected around them before they snapped out of their daze, and were left in a pile of bodies.

"Francis, get the door open! Zoey, Louis, cover the entrances!" Francis began slamming his shoulder into the door and swearing at the guy on the other side. No matter how hard he pushed against it, it wouldn't budge an inch.

"I'M GONNA TAKE THAT BELL AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!" He didn't hear the soft coughing from the other side, or notice the bells beginning to die down as he tried to force the door open. Another scream signaled that another horde was coming. He picked up his shotgun and prepared himself. Bill rushed over to the door and grabbed the handle. He gave a pull and the door flew open in a heartbeat. He turned around to yell at Francis, until a tongue shot out of the safe room and wrapped itself around the man's neck.

Thinking fast he rushed into the safe room and tackled the smoker to the ground. He grabbed the tongue and with all his strength he pulled. It snapped in half like a rubber band and he heard Francis gasping for air outside. "Everybody in! Go go go!" He stepped out of the door way with a fresh clip in his rifle and murder in his eyes. _ Nobody_ messed with his group and lived. He let out a yell as he fired into the horde of infected behind Zoey and Louis, who were helping Francis into the safe room. A hunter shrieked and jumped at him, but he adjusted his aim and a round smacked straight through the hunter's forehead.

He turned to get inside but as he entered the door a great weight slammed into him from behind and he fell to the ground. He heard the door slam shut and looked to see Louis and Francis holding it closed. Zoey rushed over and helped him out from under the thing that hit him. "What the hell was that?" He and Zoey began dragging pews that had been thrown into a corner over to the door. They began setting them against the door as the infected outside tried to enter.

"Nice shot Bill!" Zoey said cheerfully. "You killed that hunter in the air. Two points, am I right?" Louis chuckled and Francis sat down. "The hunter's body hit you in the back and you fell down. You okay?"

Francis interrupted them before Bill could respond. "Lucky for you we're here, because I don't think Life Alert would've made it in time."

"Don't be an ass Francis." Bill stretched and found his rifle again. "Those bastards are still outside. Zoey, go up that ladder and see what they're up to. Louis go with her." Zoey and Louis ascended the ladder while Bill and Francis went about shoring up their barricade. The zombies weren't trying to force the door anymore but it paid to be prepared. He knew that from experience.

Zoey's rifle began firing and Louis shouted down. "Get up here guys! Something's happening!" Without hesitation the two men readied their weapons and flew up the ladder. Throwing open the door they witnessed a mass of infected, perhaps 100 of them were in the parking lot and crowding the convenience store across the street, wailing that soulless howl.

"Zoey, Louis, stay up here and cover us. Let's go Francis!" Without hesitation they leapt to the ground and plunged into the horde. Above the gunfire and the wailing of the horde they heard screaming. The sound stood out from the rest because of the pitch. It was a human, a living, breathing human. In an instant Bill was angling to get a shot, but his assailants were clustered to tightly around that shooting was impossible. The next instant he was on the ground, his rifle out of reach. The mass of bodies was trampling him to get to the scream as he blindly reached out for a weapon, any weapon. A foot slammed into his face and he rolled onto his back to get sight of his attacker, an infected who took notice of easier prey nearer at hand. He grabbed the beast's leg and pulled him down to fight him on an equal level. They rolled around knocking other zombies to the ground with them.

A loud bang erupted from nearby and his opponent's head exploded, showering him with what was left. Francis hauled him to his feet, covered in gore himself as they pressed on. Bill was using his pistols now, picking his shots carefully in between fits of coughing. When the two men reached the store the lot was covered in bodies but more of them came. Bill kneeled next to wall while Francis took on the few new attackers from behind. "I think I swallowed my damn cigarette."

"Shit old man, get inside! I ain't hauling your bony ass to the next safe house if you break your hip!" Bill's coughing began slowly subsiding as he slipped inside. He heard swearing and a scream. This one was lower, like a dying animal surrounded by wolves. He looked up and saw the one thing he expected least.

"Francis! Get the others!"

"Cal!" At the moment she screamed my name they rushed us. Gunfire was coming from the church, more survivors if we were lucky enough to get there in time. In the middle of this attack we weren't moving anywhere far like the church so we had to retreat to the only cover we had.

"Into the store!" We rushed to it, blasting any zombie that got within spitting distance of us, but they kept coming. Sam shoved the door open and I sprinted inside with the horde on my heels. We both pushed against the door with all our might, but one of them was stuck in it and it wouldn't close. "Find something we can use Sam! Hurry!" Sam rushed away to find something to help, and without her weight the door began to creep open. They were packed so tightly outside that they would spill in like a tidal wave if the door opened. The window next to the door shattered and shards of broken glass flew through the store. Sam quickly rushed to the breach and fired her shotgun into the horde. Many of them crumpled and fell but more took their place as they pushed. A pounding noise came from behind and I looked over my shoulder to see the back door begin to collapse.

Quickly Sam ran to it and tried to keep it closed, but an arm shot through and wrapped around her neck. I saw her face begin to turn blue as she struggled to get free to no avail. I threw my crowbar to her and she thrust the straight end through the hole like a spear when she caught it. The arm went limp and she backed away from the door, reloading her shotgun as she did so. I felt my own door begin to close so I looked back to see the horde becoming thinner, but they were by no means small in number. Sam gasped as she looked through one of the windows on the other side of the store so I looked too. A boomer stood there, staring at us blankly as we struggled for our lives. I yelled at her to get away but I was too late.

The thing exploded where it stood, shattering nearly every window in the store with the blast, Sam screaming as its bile covered us both. The horde poured in through the new openings, knocking over shelves and displays as they came. One instant we were side by side unloading into them and the next we were surrounded by the horde. Their wailing grew louder as they sensed their victory at hand. I wasn't going to go down without a fight so I jumped behind the counter and reloaded. Sam was being pushed back into the back room, covered in boomer bile and using her shotgun as a club. She stepped through the doorway and vanished from my sight as more of them rushed in. I fired my rifle into the mass of bodies as they stopped momentarily to decide which one of us to finish first. That moment of hesitation cost them as I mowed them down in a second and rushed to the door. Sam's shotgun thundered from the next room as she screamed. "CAL! SAVE ME!" I shot the remaining infected between me and the door after I jumped over the counter and rushed to the door. The door itself was destroyed, laying smashed and broken on the ground inside the room. The floor was covered in bodies from the struggle, some of them having been blown completely in half by her shotgun blasts. She was grappling with three of them next to the wall, it was a losing battle if I ever saw one. The one closest to her was leaning in, craning his neck to bite her. She looked past her attackers and into my eyes with a look of primal fear as I looked back into hers. I raised my rifle and sighted in on the one about to bite her, the red dot resting right on his temple, a perfect headshot. I pulled the trigger. Click.

The moment after that he lunged and took a chunk out of her neck. Blood spurted and Sam fell to the ground as the three set to work. They were punching and clawing and biting her while I stood there trying to reload my rifle. I looked up and saw the blood still spraying from them, her struggles barely visible anymore. I dropped my rifle, rushing them and throwing them off one by one with animalistic force. I shot two of them with my sidearm as the final one stood up. His mouth was dripping with blood and he had flesh between his teeth as he lunged at me, earning a hole between his eyes for it. It was done. I dropped to her side and tried to stop the bleeding but it was coming from too many places at once. She was bruised and battered and covered in her own blood as she lay there, my hands becoming covered in it as well. "Fuck, stay with me Sam! You're too damn tough to fucking die, come on! Oh shit oh shit oh shit, what do I do? What the fucking hell do I do?" She let out one last, low and painful cry as she huddled against the wall streaked with crimson and drew her last breath.

I stood up and actually began _crying_. My tears mixed with the gore on my face as I stared at my hands as they shook uncontrollably. A fit of coughing erupted from the doorway, and I could nearly feel the smoker's gaze burning into the back of my head. I turned around and my remaining strength drained from me as I waited for the smoker to finish it. Only it wasn't a smoker.

"Francis, get the others!" Bill was coughing as he walked over to me and led me out of the store, supporting me on his shoulder. The other three ran to me as the old man led me to the church through a parking lot full of bodies. He stopped and talked with Louis as Zoey continued to lead me to the church and I saw Francis and Louis run into the store. We entered the church as they led me to a safe house and set me down on a sleeping bag, scrounging food from the cans scattered around the floor. Zoey picked one up and threw it to Bill, who caught it and began opening it with a knife he took from his boot. When he was done he passed it to me, but I set it on the floor next to my foot. I wasn't hungry.

Bill went back to trying to cough up his intestines as Zoey began talking. "I can't believe we found you! Bill and Francis thought you were dead! So did I and I think even Louis did too! What happened man?"

I didn't want to talk about it so I changed the subject. "What's up with Bill? He swallow a bug or something?"

His voice was hoarse as he replied. "Cigarette. My last one to boot."

"Oh." Zoey was about to speak again but was interrupted by Louis and Francis re-entering the room. Louis held a duffel bag in one hand and Sam's bloodstained shotgun in the other. He glared at Francis, who motioned at him to begin filling the bag and he began to do just that. "What'd you guys find?"

Louis set the shotgun down next to me as he filled the bag. I picked up the can of cold beans and started scooping them into my mouth with my hand. I forgot about the store for a second as I prepared for Francis's report on the store. I wasn't disappointed.

"I found this duffel bag in the back room of that store. It looked like something we could use to keep our supplies and stuff in it while we move. Everyone can pile their crap in this thing and not have to worry about it, and Louis even volunteered to carry it for us. Thanks Lou, now let's go."

"Hold up bike brain. _I_ found the bag, and it was _my_ idea to take it with us. And I didn't volunteer to carry _shit_."

"You're right. You volunteered to carry our stuff, now let's go guys."

"No I didn't. I got winded carrying this damn thing across the lot. I say _you_ carry it. Who's with me?" Zoey, Bill, and I raised our hands in unison.

"C'mon guys, can't we just take turns?"

Bill spoke up. "That was my first idea, but I remembered those old jokes you've been making. Have fun jackass. Let's move out people." I finished the can and stood up weakly as I slung the shotgun over my shoulder. Francis took the bag full of supplies and the rest of us readied our weapons.

"You were going for the river weren't you?" They nodded and I turned my head back to the front. "Don't worry. I'll get us there." I stepped back outside and the others followed. A large roar filled the air when we got to the street and I flicked the safety off on my gun. Whatever the hell it was, I was going to kill it. After what happened, I was going to make these infected bastards pay.

I was going to kill them all. Even if I had to do it with my bare, goddamn hands.


End file.
